Second Shooter

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"Second shooter" is a conspiracy term that gained prominence after the November 1963 assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy.

"Second shooter" is a conspiracy term that gained prominence after the November 1963 assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy. It reflected wide public disbelief in Lee Harvey Oswald as the lone plotter and shooter in the Kennedy assassination and posited a wider conspiracy involving other groups (e.g., the CIA, the mafia, Cubans), as evidenced by the supposed presence of a "second shooter" in addition to Oswald, typically said to have been positioned around the grassy knoll in Dallas' Dealey Plaza.

More recently, the term has been used in conjunction with mass shooting events taking place in public spaces such as malls and schools, as a means of casting doubt on "official" accounts of those event. The alleged participation or one or more perpetrators beyond the suspect(s) identified by police is typically claimed as evidence that such shootings are staged "false flag" events employing "crisis actors" pretending to be aggrieved survivors and are plotted to provide cover for some furtive motive (e.g., to make the public more receptive to stronger gun control measures).